Saturday, June 28, 2014

ABCs of Nature: M is for Meadow

We're excited to be participating in the ABC's of Nature which is hosted by School Time Snippets. 26 bloggers are sharing a nature themed post for each different letter of the alphabet. Already so many amazing nature activities and resources have been shared.

We were lucky to have the letter M, as there were so many different nature themed ideas (mountain, moon, morning, mist . . .) But in the end we settled on "M is for Meadow."

I've mentioned before that we're pretty blessed to live in an area where opportunities to engage with nature are just a step outside our door. For this exploration, we walked a little farther down the road to a large meadow. We talked a little about what a meadow is and what we might find there before we left the house.

Big Brother really enjoys scavenger hunts so before going I created this quick scavenger hunt using clip art from clkr.com. I'm including it today in case you want to go on your own Meadow Scavenger Hunt. (Please note, these are things you might see in a meadow in Northeastern United States, if you were looking in another region you might want to modify it.)

We attached the paper to a small board to use as a clip board. (If you don't have a board or clip board, an old cereal box folded flat with a binder clip also makes a great traveling clip board.)

On our walk we made up our own words to "Over in the Meadow" which is a cute song that has been turned into several different book versions. My favorite version is illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats. As soon as we got there we started noticing some of the items on our Scavenger Hunt page. Big Brother quickly started crossing them off.

He's been looking for an opportunity to practice using his butterfly net (which we purchased at the dollar store) and this was a great time to try it out.

In the end we saw almost everything on our list except for a snake, chipmunk, and caterpillar. We also saw a few things we had not included on our list: bumblebees, milkweed, and a deer bed.

Everyone enjoyed getting out into the field and searching for specific creatures. Big Brother never did catch anything in his net, but he definitely had fun trying.

Scavenger hunts are a great way to get kids looking at nature carefully by practicing using searching and observation skills. With clip art, you could also create scavenger hunts for other types of habitats, such as the forest, pond, beach, or swamp. We'd love to know, what natural areas are near you that you like to explore?